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09 December 2016

AIMS refutes austerity hysteria #nlpoli #AIMS

From the latest Atlantic Institute for Market Studies paper:

"Measuring
Austerity in Atlantic Canada investigates whether the use of the term
austerity in the context of Atlantic Canada’s public finance is accurate. The
author examines public accounts data from the four provinces, adjusting for
inflation, to determine the annual amount of program expenditure in absolute
and per capita terms. He also calculates the relative increase or decrease in
spending from year to year, establishing the trend in provincial government
expenditures in Atlantic Canada.

"The report offers three main findings:

The budgets of southern European countries such as Portugal,
Italy, Greece,
and Spain (the
so called “PIGS” nations) have experienced genuine austerity following the
Great recession. These countries had to cut their government spending by up to
a quarter, over as few as two fiscal years.

Provincial governments in Atlantic Canada have increasingly
spent more money on programs — in absolute and per capita terms — between 1980
and 2016. Per capita program expenditure in Newfoundland
and Labrador saw the greatest increase at 113.7 percent.
Prince Edward Island’s growth
rate was the slowest at 61 percent over the examined period.

A shifting demographic landscape in the region — notably its
aging population — does not suffice to explain these significant spending
increases. While the school-age population has dwindled in the four Atlantic
provinces, education spending continues to grow,
showing that spending increases cannot be a response to demographic changes.

"The report concludes that the use of the term austerity in
relation to fiscal policy in the Atlantic Canadian provinces is hyperbolic,
inappropriate and inaccurate.

"All governments spend more money than they did a generation
ago, with only minor blips of restraint and no sustained or disciplined effort
to cut spending significantly. The nature of Atlantic Canadian public finance,
therefore, is not one of austerity but of consistent spending growth over a
sustained period."